Posted
by
kdawson
on Sunday April 15, 2007 @07:04PM
from the pirate-party-platform dept.

dot-magnon writes "The Liberal Party of Norway (Venstre) passed a unanimous resolution that advocates legal file sharing. The party wants to legalise sharing of any copyrighted material for non-commercial use. It also proposes a ban on DRM technology, free sampling of other artists' material, and shortening the life span of copyright. The Liberal Party is the first Norwegian political party, and the first European mainstream political party, to advocate file sharing. The Liberal Party's youth wing proposed the resolution."

The actual resolution is quite more general, it uses the word "åndsverk" which can be translated pretty much to "copyrightable work". E.g. our copyright law is called "åndsverkloven".

Their english translation:"Ban DRM: The Liberal Party states that anyone who has bought the right to use a product needs a technologically neutral way of using it. This means that distributors can not control how citizens wish to play back legally bought digital music. The Liberal Party wants to prohibit technical limitations on consumers' legal rights to freely use and distribute information and culture, collectively known as DRM. In cases where a ban on DRM would be outside Norwegian jurisdiction, products that use DRM technology need to clearly specify their scope of use before they are sold."

Trying to stay very literal:"Ban against DRM: The Liberal Party is of the opinion that all that have bought the right to use a copyrightable work must have technology-neutral opportunities to use that copyrightable work as one wants. This means that producers and deliverers of technology can not control how citizens for example should play back the music that they have bought. The Liberal Party will therefore prohibit socalled DRM (Digital Rights Management), which are technical limitations to limit the consumers' legal right to freely copy and use information and culture. In those cases where a ban is outside Norwegian jurisdiction, products that contain DRM technlogy shall be clearly marked."

I can't believe that people are seriously considering a ban on DRM. I suppose I should have realized that it's natural to try to fix a problem by making a new law, but when the problem *is* the law, you should fix it by repealing the problematic law, not making more.

There is absolutely zero need to ban DRM, for one simple reason: DRM doesn't work, has never worked, can't ever work. All DRM schemes are fundamentally flawed, at a deep technological level. The only course of action necessary is to remove all laws protecting DRM, thus making it completely legal to make, distribute, even sell software and/or hardware for the explicit purpose of breaking DRM. Completely legal copies of DeCSS, FairUse4WM, QTFairUse, BackupHDDVD, etc would be available everywhere. Entire companies could be founded to muster the resources to perform sophisticated attacks on DRM hardware and software (perhaps even a brute force cryptological attack would be feasible in some cases with enough resources). Modchips, firmware hacks, replacement toner cartridges with DRM lockout chips, etc would all be readily available.

In such an environment, all DRM would be futile. After a few more thwarted schemes, even the most stubborn holdouts in the RI/MPAA would have to see the light. DRM would go away of its own accord, and it would all be the result of *repealed* laws instead of new ones. Fewer laws on the books is a good thing.

Norway can ban DRM by local law. They can't repeal the EUCD (the EU's equivalent to the DMCA) because that's a European directive. The best Norway can do is to make the EUCD unenforcable and lobby against it in the EP.

We should welcome this as it is the first big step of defiance against the EUCD. If Norway banned DRM it would give the anti-EUCD lobby some much-needed ammunition.

Well, I think there's a big and clear difference between writing software for a platform generally as opposed to adding DRM which not only isn't needed to make the software function, but which in fact deliberately impairs functionality.

What if I owned a PSP and wanted to play the New Super Mario Bros. on it? Would I be justified in warezing the rom and hacking my PSP's firmware to play it, so long as I sent my $30 check to Nintendo Norway? Could I request Microsoft release NT3.5 for my super nintendo so that it's cross platform?

Well, looking at the earlier post in the thread, the platform is that "producers and deliverers of technology can not control how citizens for example should play back the music that they have bought."

So from this we can expect that authors would not be required to release works for all platforms, but cannot interfere, e.g. by using DRM, with attempts by their customers to make those works function on other platforms.

So you could not download a ROM and hack it, but you could buy a copy of the game, rip the ROM, and then hack it to run on a PSP. You could not force MS to release NT for the SNES, but if you bought a copy, you could try to get it to run on the SNES. That's how I'm understanding it, anyway.

What if I owned a PSP and wanted to play the New Super Mario Bros. on it? Would I be justified in warezing the rom and hacking my PSP's firmware to play it, so long as I sent my $30 check to Nintendo Norway?

Why not? Considering that in your example Nintendo still got their fair price for the game, can you think of anything that's actually ethically wrong with your scenario anyway? I can't.

This probably got addressed already, but Apple only provides DRM-free versions of their operating system.

Mac OS X contains plenty of DRM. FairPlay technology which restricts copying of songs purchased through iTunes (or more precisely, prevents playback unless the DRM technology is used to unlock the file).

The DVD player software contains DRM software (though thoroughly ineffective, DVD-Jon has seen to that).

I've also heard there may be some DRM in OS X to prevent hackers from running Mac OS X on a generic PC -- but I'm not clued in on that area sufficiently to make a positive assertion of that.

Sure, you can argue that the DRM isn't active unless you have DRM:ed files, and it's the files that are the problem, and not the OS itself -- but the fact is that the DRMed files wouldn't be there if they weren't supported by software.

Wait until they actually do it first. They're not in government at the moment, and there's a small thing parties that get into power tend to do, I call it a 180 turn. They only have something like 6% of the votes, so even if they still want to, it could die in coalition talks. And beyond that, through the EEC agreement we're bound to implement EU directives like the EUCD, which noone thought was a good idea really. Good sign? Yes. But it's a looooong way from becoming reality.

Now the people who aren't going to get paid for their work... that's a different matter entirely.

This mentality is behind a lot of misconceptions when it comes to pirate politics.

As Pirates (I am a member of the Swedish Pirate Party) we believe there is no inherent right in getting paid for copies. We do however believe in a right to charge for performing a work.

If artists who are out to make money stop producing due to copyright reform -- good riddance. There'll still be plenty of music and culture left, just as there has always been.

To take one example, in the Music Industry, even the big labels don't see recorded music as a product any more -- but rather as advertising for other events and products.

The fact is that technology for unlimited copying is here -- and the laws preventing private exploitation of this technology are outdated and counterproductive. With new technologies, people and products are made redundant. This happens all the time -- today nobody sees the sharp decline in sales and production of horse-whips after the widespread adoption of the automobile as a bad thing for example.

Except that:1. Music isn't the only thing that can be copyrighted. Movies can't exactly be performed live and neither can software.2. Since the invention of the printing press there has been technology for nearly unlimited copying save for a small cost for the actual copy. The xerox allowed for private individuals to make copies. Copyrights exist exactly for this reason, saying technology makes it pointless means you don't know the first thing about them.

Movies will still survive through private patronage or government subsidies. A number of important films that are acclaimed as triumphs of cinema were not expected to generate any profit, but the auteur was able to secure funding by people who appreciated his vision. And as for software, the point of the OP remains. People might not necessarily be paid for the duplication of software, but they may nonetheless be paid for its creation. Look at Google sponsoring Free Software projects.

Movies will still survive through private patronage or government subsidies

Please God, no. The last thing I want is for the government to be paying for movies to get made. There are a lot of movies made that absolutely fucking suck and I don't want tax dollars going towards subsidizing that. Or music, or books. I don't like it when the government bails out farmers or airlines, either.

If the government pays for movies to get made, not only are you paying for the movies you like, but you're paying for every

Guess what, most European countries already have had governments subsidizing films for decades and decades, and the result has hardly been Gigli meets Waterworld. Try to remember that your country isn't the only one on Earth and that there are places out there where things are different.

Agreed, Governments need to stay out of any and all creative activities (creative accounting too, but that's wishful thinking....

But there are other possibilities. There's no reason movies can't be done as performances - Rocky Horror Show being one example. Movies can still make plenty of money as free downloads from sites with ads (text based please). And special edition collectors DVDs will still sell for movies at the thin end of the distribution tail.

Movies will still survive through private patronage or government subsidies.

There's another option, one that we've already seen. Sell the 'bugs' on your show (those little ghosted images that are normally used for network ID.) Why advertise a network when you don't need one? Skip the network, get the advertisor to fund the project, and put his logo up in the bug's place. Then release it everywhere.

Fun part is, the more copies that are made, the more bang the advertisor gets for his buck. Later, you can s

Government subsidized movies. Oh boy! I bet those will be entertaining (/sarcasm).

A number of European countries have the government subsidizing the arts. However, the government doesn't keep too much track of how the money is spent. Just look at IRCAM in France, a multi-million dollar music and acoustics research laboratory, generously funded by the French state, but whose musical output is entirely free of restraints. Similarly, much of Ingmar Bergman's films were made with state subsidies, and that didn't stop them from being considered masterpieces from film buffs and critics.

Except that:1. Music isn't the only thing that can be copyrighted. Movies can't exactly be performed live and neither can software.2. Since the invention of the printing press there has been technology for nearly unlimited copying save for a small cost for the actual copy. The xerox allowed for private individuals to make copies. Copyrights exist exactly for this reason, saying technology makes it pointless means you don't know the first thing about them.

There's a big difference between the printing press, the xerox machine, and file sharing.

The printing press meant that organisations could suddenly print large numbers of copies of a single work. Production of copies wasn't the largest cost any more, it was the actual production of the content. Rightly, copyright was instated to prevent other bookprinters from profiteering off somebodyelses work. To this day, the Pirate Party does not condone or support copyright infringement for commercial gain.

The Xerox machine was a revolution in copying technology, but was very limited in its scope. It took considerable work to copy books with a xerox machine. It's self-regulating in that way. There wasn't really any pressure to update copyright laws because the societal impacts of the Xerox machine weren't nearly significant enough.

With file sharing and the Internet, suddenly anybody can make infinite copies at neglible cost of any information that can be stored digitally.

This is a *good thing*, and is a fact of life -- and the status quo can't be maintained through outdated legislation.

You make good points that making money off movies might be hard in the future, but the fact is that the big bucks in movies comes from movie theater tickets. The DVD sales are just extra cream on top, and those crappy cams and telecines you see on file sharing networks are definitely no substitute for the real thing.

Sure, DVD sales may diminish, but that's always been extra cream on top -- not the main bottom line.

Either way, if you start trying to charge for something that's more convenient than file sharing, they will come. It worked for All Of MP3 (shady non-compensation of artists aside), and it would work for the movie industry too. I for one would rather pay a few dollars to watch a movie in DVD-quality using streaming downloading (entirely possible with technology today) than having to wait a few hours to get it off bittorrent. Instead, the content industry has made their own "legitimate download" services more cumbersome than the illegal alternative, and it'll be their undoing.

Now try to tell a writer how they're going to get paid, when it will be perfectly legal to scan and post a book after sale number one. Once more, for the learning disabled; Copyright is not about money at all, it is about the author getting to decide how to distribute their work, not a bunch of I want it free'ers.

Please tell a writer how they're going to get paid, when there's no guarantee that the manuscript he sends out to a bunch of publishers will be accepted or not.

Not tell him what a great chance he could have of making *some* money by putting his book out on Internet, and selling hardcopies to interested parties.

This business model works. I have bought several books (technical books, but the idea should extend to fiction too) using this exact method.

Sure, you can't get paid for every single person who reads your book. Just like the way you can't get paid by every single person who listens to your music as they walk past you on the street. The Internet has made everybody a street performer, whether they like it or not. The only way to stop that from happening is not to perform.

Not tell him what a great chance he could have of making *some* money by putting his book out on Internet, and selling hardcopies to interested parties.

Who is to say the money from hardcopies will go to him? The business model works because only those he assigns rights to are allowed to make hard copies of his book. Now if you totally remove copyright, anybody can make hardcopies of his book.

I don't know if anybody in this discussion is advocating a abolision of copyright.

The Swedish Pirate Party, which I am a member of, advocates a reduction in the term of copyright to somewhere betweeh 5 or 20 years after the work has been produced, as well as a reduction in scope of copyright only to cover commercial copying.

This is a far cry from abolishing copyright.

And as far as I know, Norway's Venstre doesn't want to abolish copyright either, they also want it reformed, not abolished.

The Swedish Pirate Party, which I am a member of, advocates a reduction in the term of copyright to somewhere betweeh 5 or 20 years after the work has been produced, as well as a reduction in scope of copyright only to cover commercial copying.

I agree that copyrights should be reduced - do a survey, find out that 95% of all revenue occurs in the first X years and set it to that.My concern is when you start giving a pass to certain interests (eg non-commercial) you start opening up loopholes in the system an

Dividing commercial and non-commercial copying is a tricky issue, though, and I'm sure people will find a way to take advantage of it.Imagine an internet radio station that transmits a playlist instructing clients to automatically download the next song over legal P2P. Or companies that sell access to private trackers, even though users are still technically downloading from each other. Or a company that sells a cheap TiVo knockoff with Step 1 in the instruction manual: "Download TiVo Software".

This article hides a very strong misconception. Maybe Norway is the first European country "...to legalise sharing of any copyrighted material for non-commercial use", but that's only because in most Europe cultural copyrighted material (everything but software, that is) is *already* -and always has been, free to be copied for non-commercial use.Certainly the Pirate Party wants to go beyond this (since they want to include *all* copyrighted material, not only cultural, and they want to include mass media r

So how exactly is an author supposed to get paid for writing a book? In the case of books, the only performance is the initial writing.There's already not much money in writing, unless you're named King or your initials are JKR.

It takes a long time to write, for example, a good fantasy or sci-fi novel. Yet they could be reproduced costless digitally.

Books are generally written by a single person, so it would take a very long time to write a book and work full time (which can be seen in the cases of authors

There are business models that can allow for the production of books without DRM or copyright, but they're different than the systems we're used to. You can write and publish serials, rather than books, and use the free publicity that copying gives you to your advantage: tell your audience that if you don't get paid x, the next installment won't be released. There are a few authors (notably, Steven King) who have experimented with approaches like this (although his was slightly different). Writing in such an environment is less of a solitary activity, where the writer closets him or herself away and returns after some time with a book to hawk, than an interactive one, where the writer needs to constantly maintain the relationship with his benefactors.

In truth, there probably wouldn't be as many books written, but I'm not sure that's necessarily bad per se; I think our current system encourages the overproduction of many forms of "art" basically on speculation, far more than the market really demands and is willing to pay for, which is why there are so many out-of-work artists of various stripes, e.g. authors who have written books that nobody wants to buy. An approach that resulted in nothing being written without a market for it would result in less pages produced annually, but it would lead to only the stuff that people were actually willing to pay for getting written.

Paper books don't have DRM. I'm not arguing defending DRM in ANY way, and I hope no one took my comment that way. I think DRM is insulting and a waste of everyone's time.I've read my share of crappy published books, that much is true, but it's one of the markets where publishers are less inclined to take risk publishing a crap book, because profits are so low. With the possible exception of self-help and diet books, which, like that stupid cheese moving book, are inexplicably popular.

No, nobody bothers to do it now, because as a society we spend an awful lot of resources enforcing a framework of laws which allow them to produce art on speculation and then sell it like aspirin tablets, over and over, and prohibit people from making further copies of something they've already purchased. With a framework like that in place, there's no reason to try and build an audience and sell serials. You'd be a fool to, particularly if you're a publisher (where starving writers will send you manuscripts for free on the sheer hope that you'll decide to read a page while blowing your nose or wiping up a coffee spill with it and maybe give them a contract).

But that doesn't mean it's a good system, or that on the whole -- when you include the costs of the current system, generally taken for granted -- that an alternative system that was more directly market-driven wouldn't be preferable.

And it's not as though direct-patronage systems don't work, they've obviously worked fairly well in the past; it's also well understood that subscription services work very well in many media, where you pay less for any individual unit of information than to a continuous stream of information -- the value of such services would likewise be unaffected.

Exactly. So if you expect to get paid, don't go writing a book. The starving author is a staple stereotype of today's society, and it isn't because evil pirates are going around xeroxing his book.Making money on books is *hard*, even today, and that hasn't stopped people from writing books.

So what is it that drives these people to write, even though they almost certainly won't get paid? Probably not copyright.

Creativity needs outlets, and they'll always exist. Why do you think there's so much great free stu

Except I'd rather the authors I like not have to write in their spare time and on lunch breaks. I'd rather they get paid to write, and then have more time to write their books. From a purely consumer standpoint, the idea of less quality books irks the snot out of me. I read voraciously. I don't mind paying for books.

And there's also a lot of crap free stuff on the internet. People who would never normally be given an outlet, and I have to wade through them.

Except I'd rather the authors I like not have to write in their spare time and on lunch breaks. I'd rather they get paid to write, and then have more time to write their books. From a purely consumer standpoint, the idea of less quality books irks the snot out of me. I read voraciously. I don't mind paying for books.

And there's also a lot of crap free stuff on the internet. People who would never normally be given an outlet, and I have to wade through them.

Points taken. I don't think we completely agree, but I don't think we're as far from it as I did when I started my first reply.

I have no problem at all with severely pulling back the current ridiculousness of the "IP" laws. Most of those are designed to protect stupid business models, and there's absolutely no reason for "author's life plus 99 years."

Then can you explain why companies holding intellectual property try to prevent its theft? They pay money to create something that can easily be copied, why should they not have exclusive rights on its distribution? Why should you have a right to such intellectual property for free? Just because you want it and claim that protecting it is as outdated as a horse whip?

Then can you explain why companies holding intellectual property try to prevent its theft? They pay money to create something that can easily be copied, why should they not have exclusive rights on its distribution?

If you actually go back and examine the logic of that statement it borders on the absurd.

Are you seriously suggesting that if a company has a poor business model it's anybodies fault but their own?

The companies holding intellectual property do just that, *hold* it. They're not on anybodys side but their own, in fact, I could argue that they're damaging to society.

I see no reason to continue to support this "industry" based on reinforced outdated legislation. Do you really it's a good idea for a single company to have rights of redistribution to something that's so trivial to redistribute, that millions of people around the world are doing it without even batting an eyelid?

We don't need the companies help to redistribute things any more. If they don't like it, they're welcome to take their profits, close up shop, and pull out. Culture will find its way without them, even better than before they arrived.

If a company creates something, they do have a certain right (in the liberal market economic sense) to do whatever the hell they want with it regardless of how poor their business model is. The opining of the Norwegian Pirate Party does not negate this. If you are going to argue that laws to protect copyright are outdated because technology to more easily subvert them has been invented, why not argue that the advent of the firearm should mark the end of murder laws?

These anti-IP arguments essentially break down to the same knee jerk pro-communism arguments that were very prominent 50 years ago. Socializing goods/services for the purposes of making them "free" to the people who want them has rarely demonstrated anything but disaster for those goods/services. Forcing companies to relinquish ownership of goods (even if technology has made them intangible) will have side effects that go far beyond sticking it to the very rich and getting stuff for free.

If a company creates something, they do have a certain right (in the liberal market economic sense) to do whatever the hell they want with it regardless of how poor their business model is.

The issue is not whether the creator has the right to do things with the work -- we're all agreed that he has that right. The issue is whether the creator has the right to prevent other people from acting equally as freely with regard to that work.

That sort of monopoly certainly does not inherently spring from the act of creation. Nor is it commonplace, really. For example, when sushi was introduced to American cuisine, the existing itamae didn't get to keep competitors from making the exact same food. Their hard work in creating the market was exploited by others and this is a fact of life and not a problem with the market or the law.

Authors do not inherently have the right to keep other people from making copies of their works. But just as the government sometimes grants monopolies to utilities in order to ensure greater public benefits than would be had from a deregulated market, it is sometimes acceptable to grant monopolies to authors provided that the public receives a greater benefit from this than they would if these monopolies, called copyrights, were not granted. The public benefits by having more works created and published but equally by having as few or no restrictions on what they can do with those works. So simply increasing copyright is not an ideal solution, since 1) there is an issue of diminishing returns as to how much creation and publication they encourage, and 2) that would run contrary to the public interest in having less copyright.

These anti-IP arguments essentially break down to the same knee jerk pro-communism arguments that were very prominent 50 years ago

Pshaw. If you want a free market then you have to be against copyrights, since they are governmental market regulation. Hell, they're basically a form of subsidy for authors, meant to benefit the public. So really, one would imagine that it would be socialists or communists that are in favor of copyrights, while free-market capitalists are against them. The only reason that the authors and publishers support copyrights is because they benefit so much from them, and they don't want to have to face the additional competition if they were reduced or abolished.

"As Pirates (I am a member of the Swedish Pirate Party) we believe there is no inherent right in getting paid for copies"thats communism right?I'm not trolling, or being negative, I repesct people who believe in communist principles, but often (in my experience) they don't realise what they are.You expect people who can manufacture products (songs, software etc) to do so without any expectation of being compensated for the fruits of their labour (assuming those fruits are desired and consumed). That remind

"Personally, I believe in freedom. People ought to be able to sell their wares in any way they want. If you don't like how they're offering it, don't buy it. If you don't like the license, don't buy it. If you don't like DRM, don't buy it. If you want the right to redistribute it any way you wish, only buy products with those rights."Personally, I believe in freedom. People ought to be able to use their wares in any way they want. If you don't like how they're using it, don't sell it. If you don't like t

Sure, I'm all in favour of having a system whereby people who create stuff, gets paid. However, the current copyright system is not sustainable by any means. Digital technology has changed the landscape, and there's nothing we can do about it, no matter how good the arguments in favour of intellectual property rights are.

We have always shared intellectual property:

If you heard a joke, you have probably told someone else. Telling jokes you didn't make up yourself is not, and have never been illegal. What if you could send someone a whole book as easily? Or an entire library? With digital technology we can!

If someone taught you a tune to play on a musical instrument, you would probably teach it to someone else. Doing that is not, and has never been illegal. What if you could send someone a complete musical recording as easily? Or all the musical recordings made in Spain between 1920 and 1935? With digital technology we can!

If someone taught you a cool mathematical technique, you would probably tell it to someone else. Doing that is not, and has never been illegal. What if you could send someone a whole computer program as easily? Or all the computer programs ever written that will work on a certain brand of computer? With digital technology we can!

The creator of something ought to be able to set the terms of his creation.

Sure, (s)he can either keep it a secret, or (s)he can show it to others. Artificially restricting the terms under which it is copied is something that is an interesting idea, and might have worked in the past, but unfortunately, it no longer works. You can't keep teenagers from having sex either. Perfect digital copies is a revolution in how we communicate ideas. And even though intellectual property rights was a good idea before digital technology existed, doesn't mean it will continue to be so forever. Intellectual property rights will end some time in this century.

Interestingly enough, this is an almost word-for-word translation of the Swedish Pirate Party's declaration of principles.

The Swedish Pirate Party didn't explicitly permit this copying, except for declaring their pages to be "No Copyright". I guess Venstre practice what they preach, and the Swedish Pirate Party has also come out with a statement saying that they welcome this act of copying.:-)

More information about this (in Swedish) from Piratpartiet can be found here [piratpartiet.se].

Yeah, but the subtle details that differ is where I like the Norwegian suggestion more. I still believe copyrights are important, and using samples commercially should of course make one have to pay for it IMO. Personally, I feel the Swedish PP is a bit too radical even for me, although on a philosophical level, maybe they do know better. *shrug* It's really hard to tell for me, because the society they suggest is so radically different.

The Society the Swedish Pirate Party is proposing is hardly radical nor different. We just want laws to match the current information society that is already developing.The society where these singing muppets on Youtube [youtube.com] is technically illegal because the copyright owner has most probably not explicitly permitted Youtube to share that particular piece of video.

But does the presence of this clip and hundreds like it diminish our society? No! It improves it! I feel the world is a much better place now I know t

My translation, done quickly just now, so errors are possible:The Norwegian Liberal Party, equivalent to the Swedish Liberal Peoples Party, today took the program of the Pirate party and made it their own.

At the ongoing national convention a pronouncement was adopted unanimously, which excepting that it has fewer details is a direct translation of the essentials of the program of the Pirate Party with regard to cultural ecology, with further wording from the subheadings of the program. Intention to "encoura

WTO complaint? About a program of a political party in a member state? That hasn't been implemented in any way? From a party in opposition?
Not to say that the lobbyists and noise-makers will not lobby and make noise to make sure that no other mainstream parties follow Venstre, but I doubt the WTO will have anything to say about it any time soon.

A similar argument should be made that IP rights to pharmeceuticals should be overturned, so that any company should be allowed to produce knock offs of drugs.

That would certainly bring down prices for consumers quite a bit... for existing drugs. However, it would disincent pharmeceutical companies to make the mammouth R&D investments needed to discover new ones.

A similar argument should be made that IP rights to pharmeceuticals should be overturned, so that any company should be allowed to produce knock offs of drugs.

Yes!

In fact, the Swedish Pirate Party (of which I am a member) uses the pharmaceutical industry as an example of an area where patents are harmful.

The pharmaceutical industry today spends more money on advertising than on R&D, and also receives a very large bulk of its funding through government grants and other subsidies.

Getting rid of the patent system would be a big win for society at large. Maybe then we'd get more drugs for things like AIDS and not as many drugs for erectile disfunction.:-)

Speaking of AIDS drugs, a lot of people in the third world can't afford AIDS treatment because of the artificially inflated drug prices due to patents. Are pharmaceutical patents really worth their cost in human lives?

No -- let the governments continue to fund pharmaceutical research -- maybe more than before, and get rid of patents. It's better for everybody in the long run, except for Big Pharma.

Hey, great idea! Let's put the politicians in charge of ALL medical research! I'm sure the Bush administration would do a swell job allocating money to promising areas like stem cell research, birth control methods, the morning after pill (that they improperly kept the FDA from approving for over-the-counter), etc.

Good point. But I distrust the government to allocate funding just as much as I distrust Big Pharma.:-)

In Europe, government funding of organisations for the advancement of arts has worked relatively well in the past, I see no reason for it to work in the future for pharmaceutical development, as long as it's not politicised.

The laws of supply and demand still apply without patents.In case of a shortage, unless there is some kind of mechanism (like a patent) limiting production capacity, production capacity will increase, and more players will enter the market, lured in by the higher prices.

I never said the price of production should be subsidised. There's a difference between subsidising research and production. The current system is actually a kind of production-based subsidy, come to think of it.:-)

"The question of whether $1000 in my pocket is worth some African boy's life is ultimately a decision to be made by me, not by almighty Government."Only if you live completely isolated from society, which no human does.

All societies inherently have laws that govern the conduct of its populace. Claiming something else is nonsensical or wishful thinking; I could say "The question whether I want to save someone I see is in trouble, is ultimately a decision to be made by me". Just as yours, this seems rational,

A similar argument should be made that IP rights to pharmeceuticals should be overturned, so that any company should be allowed to produce knock offs of drugs.

Agreed.

That would certainly bring down prices for consumers quite a bit... for existing drugs. However, it would disincent pharmeceutical companies to make the mammouth R&D investments needed to discover new ones.

What mammoth R&D investments? At best, this would would kill the mammoth advertising expenditures, which arguably should not exist in the first place. Most of the (minimal) investment is in researching replacements for existing high-margin drugs, which are dissimilar enough to avoid patents but functionally identical.

In any case, these companies most certainly don't have our health or best interests in mind. Investment in medicine should be driven by need rather than profit, and the existing system is clearly a massive failure.

a friend of wine works for a large company researching cancer drugs. The reason they spend a lot of money (and trust me, they do) researching this, is that they know that patent law / trademarks etc will mean that if the drugs work, they will get their investment bank, and the banks that lend them the money (and the shareholders) are working with the same idea in mind.That company would close its doors right this second if they had no way to protect the fruits of their research. Why would a shareholder inve

See, I don't get this argument. Ignoring any principals and/or pro-anti patentability stances, are you suggesting that if the pharmaceutical companies didn't get the huge amount of protection they get the would simply close up shop? they would go from making less money, to making *no money*?. As I understand it pharmaceutical companies benefit from all sorts of things they don't pay for, from R&D at universities, through to government subsidies. They make a huge amount of money, making less, or having to collaborate wouldn't be a bad thing for the users of their products. And anyway, what use is a treatment for a disease you have if you cant afford it?

Oh, and what about the fact that some drug companies research and development aims are geared toward high value markets (dieting and beauty for example, which can be addressed through other means) rather than areas that would help large sections of the population with actual illness (where a drug may be the only option)? The market forces involved force company's to do what is best for their bottom lines, most of the time, Not what is best for society as a whole. With a shift of our IP related legislation, maybe that would change.

they'd have to >gasp investigate and learn things, working smarter to produce designed drugs.

And in the meantime, people would DIE.

Maybe they wouldn't. Maybe you're right, maybe drugs would be produced faster that way. Would you be willing to risk your life? How abou your mother's life? Or your arthritic grandfather, would you be willing to risk increasing his pain, just to make their research methods more scientifically pleasing?

Oh, but their research methods *do* work. I know it's fun to bash pharmaceutical companies, but the fact remains that if you get infected with MRSA, you'll be damned glad all those lab mice died to bring you vancomycin and linezolid, won't you?

Of course you have a choice. You can wander into our national forests and gather the herbs you think will help. You can pray for devine intervention. But you're right, to use the drugs developed by a company, you pretty much have to buy from the company.

...refuse to close the barn door, and make those fraudulent claims that the horse has already bolted!

Anyone in their right mind can see the horse clearly inside its stall within the barn, lazily chomping out of its nose-bag. If you can't see it, your vision must be impaired - get to your nearest RIAA office and book in for the next available seminar.

I'm sure there must have been a lot of ferry operators put out when the Channel Tunnel opened up to connect road traffic between the UK and France. But in that case, the ferry operators didn't have any significant pull with government, so the tunnel went ahead.

To borrow Russel Crowe's line from Master and Commander, we have to choose the 'lesser of two weevils':

Widspread infringement of intellectual property

Increasing concentration of intellectual property amongst an elite oligopoly which is working to mutate the intellectual property regulations into a force which increasingly represses expression, invention and communication and squashes competition

"Venstre" refers to the party's position on parlamentarism when the party was formed, in 1884. They were for it, Høyre (which means right), was against it. Nowadays, Venstre more of a right-wing party, and will typically collaborate with Høyre (which is a conservative party).

From the wikipedia article (assuming it hasn't been to horrible vandalized by my fellow slashdotters yet) I'm not sure if I would describe this as a MAJOR political party with maybe one twentieth of the norwegian vote. Still a bigger organization that the Swedish Pirate Party, perhaps this is a positive sign of things to come. Makes me wish we had political parties somewhere between the the wacko fringe (Green, Reform, etc) that no one takes seriously and the big two which both seem to owe too much to the **AA to ever consider taking a position like this one.

The United States system prevents there being more than two serious parties. European countries tend to use proportional representation to solve the problem. In the United States, that doesn't work because our congresmen represent geographic areas - but the problem could be signficiantly reduced if we used a voting system like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_Voting [wikipedia.org] or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method [wikipedia.org] that didn't severely punish third party votes strategically.

Another potential tactic would be to promote subparties. The final elections are solidly locked down to Democrat or Republican, but the actual Democrat/Republican primaries are much more open - an organized "branch" of a major party could probably get their candidate nominated with an effort that is possible to achieve.

I can's answer for the USA but in Europe, we have had Youth Sections of major political parties coming out with sensible ideas for years.

Then the old farts in the "grown up" sections deny that they would ever do such a wicked thing.

For example, we have all heard for years that banning certain recreational drugs should be dropped. Everybody knows that this would be a good thing. Then the 50something year old hypocrites put down their cigars and whisky and prevent it!

Except this actually *has* made it from the youth section to the main party. That's why this is a big story.

Youth sections holding opinions like this (albeit less well-defined) is nothing new. It's a joke among us in the Swedish Pirate Party that we actually have 8 youth sections. Our own, and one for every single major political power currently represented in parliament.:-)

The Liberal party of Norway is a relatively small party [wikipedia.org] that received only 6 percent of the vote in 2005, and has been shrinking since its creation. But unlike the Pirate Party of Sweden they do have 10 (out of 169) seats in parliament.

what Norway's immigration policy is. I am retiring and living on a catamaran in about 10 years and I was thinking about leaving the USA anyway if it does not stop becoming so politically and religiously insane over here.

1. Was illegal for computer software since long ago, became illegal for music, movies etc. in the new copyright law of 20052. DVD-Jon was never in the supreme court, the prosecution dropped the case after having lost twice. Furthermore, his trial was before the 2005 law introducing the EUCD which added anti-circumvention to the law.3. True, unless it's covered again by the 2005 anti-circumvention paragraphs - it preempts it explicitly.

Also you might want to read this (norwegian) [forbrukerportalen.no], which shows that nobody agrees on what rights we have exactly.

If that would be the worst thing to happen from abolishing copyright law, then I'd say that we'd be pretty lucky. After all, preserving the GPL is not more important than dealing with the massive problems surrounding everything else.

That being said, I don't think that abolishing copyright is the best thing to do, but I do think that serious reform is needed.